– Racism in Perth in the 1970s

By Greg

I recently published Part 5 of The 1973 Diary. In the Comments section, at the bottom of the post our friend Helen has written “I think once Tren met the Gibson sisters and moved into Bey Apartments her life changed dramatically and she had to grow up quickly“.

The Gibson sisters were “the Twinnies” (Sharon and Joyce), and their older sister Rose. In the Kitchen Tape recordings Trenna didn’t cover moving out of GFS to Bey Apartments, or, a while after that, moving out of Bey Apartments. I think it was with Sharon and Joyce that she made that first move.

Although she never recorded the story about leaving Bey Apartments in Goderich Street in Perth, she did tell me about it a few times over the years, and I will now relate it to you.

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GFS

Trenna lived at Girls’ Friendly Society in Adelaide Terrace in Perth. Whilst there she met Rose, and also “The Twinnies”. Importantly to note is that the other girls were all Aboriginal, Trenna was not.

The Twinnies are mentioned here, and are mentioned here.

After a while, and I’m not sure how long, they decided to move out of GFS and rent their own place. I think the catalyst for this was when Rose’s mother died suddenly and Rose had to return to the country to look after the rest of the family.

Trenna, Sharon and Joyce found a flat in Bey Apartments. Today it looks big and brutal. To me, someone who has lived in houses most of their life, it doesn’t look a particularly friendly place.

However, thinking back to the mid 1970s there were quite a lot of these large, inexpensive blocks of flats. Many people I know moved into similar blocks as their first home after leaving their parents.

Tren didn’t tell me very much about life at Bey Apartments other than the cosmopolitan group of guys she started to mix with and the way she was kicked out. I’m pretty sure she met Gee there – who later wanted to marry her. See the story of that here.

Evicted

Apparently Trenna went away for a day or so. I don’t know if it was a party, or if she went away for the weekend. But when she returned her flat mates said they (everyone except Trenna) had been evicted.

They said that they had been on the balcony and where having a yelled conversation with someone they knew who was down on the ground. Apparently “people” had complained and the live-in caretaker had evicted them for being a nuisance.

Trenna told me that they had received no warnings or had had any previous bad behaviour.

Now Trenna had always had a keen sense of justice. She immediately went to see the caretaker to plead their case,

It turns out the caretaker was in no mood for that and told Trenna “Well, if you’re a B…[insert racist Australian word for Aboriginal people] lover, then you can go too!”

So, Trenna was evicted too, and the whole flat of friends went their seperate ways.

I think Trenna told me that eventually Rose joined the Airforce, and hopefully married a man who wore a tie. I know that one time when I was at the University of Western Australia with Trenna around the time she was studying French, one of the other girls recognised Trenna and they had a bit of a chat. I don’t think as a group they ever got together again.

For her part Trenna’s next stop after Bey Apartments was a brief period with sister Nancy and her husband Jim.

The Kitchen Tapes series of transcripts have details of Trenna’s life before and after this period.